[E3 2017] The People’s Diary: Day 1

Despite what it looks like, SmashPad isn’t at the event in official capacity, and we haven’t been since 2010. With E3 open to the public, we have three people in the area attending the event as well as other events in the surrounding area, and this feature is all about telling you what it’s like from “the public’s” perspective.

E3 is officially here. This is Day 1 of all the craziness, and I don’t know whether this is supposed to be the best day to have or the worst day to have, but as a San Diego Comic Con veteran, lines don’t really mean much to me. The Los Angeles Convention Center was open from 12:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., so we had six hours to get stuff done.

So what happened? I played three games. Yeah, that isn’t a lot, so it’s really all about the planning you make, and the thing is nobody really knows how.

E3 has always been an event closed to the public, reserved for industry professionals and the media. That said, most of the time we see gaming developers and publishers setting up appointments with different outlets and companies for one-on-one time with their games. Obviously, that won’t work when dealing with 15,000 paying attendees in the public.

Instead of being an expo for professionals to see what other professions are showcasing, E3 now more than ever is simply a free-for-all when it comes to the games that generate the most hype.

So as a member of the public, what’s there to plan? On day one, it’s really all about what you want to play first, so ideally entering the side of the convention center where your main booths are is the way to go, right?

Meh.

My group intended on entering from the West Hall, because that’s where Sony and Nintendo are, but that was the problem: Thousands of other people had the same idea. So instead, we entered from the upper South Hall and totally geeked out for about 15 minutes. It was our first E3, and we’ve only seen this stuff online and in magazines, so there was definitely some craziness within ourselves that we had to handle.

The games I played were Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite, Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2, and Super Mario Odyssey, and I’ll have previews for each of these games go up as soon as I finish writing them shortly. Until then, I’m getting some rest and hopefully will have a better gameplan for tomorrow.